Volvo
yachts on course after mid-ocean drama
The competing yachts in the Volvo Ocean Race were
back on course for Brazil after a mid-ocean drama in
which the crew of Movistar sent out a distress message
saying they were in danger of sinking.
Rival yachts - each of them equipped with Inmarsat
communications - were put on standby for a possible
rescue operation until Movistar was made safe.
The crew of Spanish yacht Movistar raised the alarm
after the boat started taking on water 278 miles off
Cape Horn on the fourth leg of the 31,500-mile round-the-world
race, from Wellington, New Zealand, to Rio de Janeiro.
Movistar, which won the previous leg from Melbourne,
Australia, to Wellington, had been racing along at more
than 30 knots and in second place overall.
But disaster almost struck in the middle of the night
as the crew found themselves working frantically in
cold, dark conditions to bail out knee-deep water and
seal a severe leak to the vessel.
Skipper Bouwe Bekking organized a possible evacuation
and e-mailed the race office to request that the yachts
following his - Ericsson, ABN Amro Two and Brasil 1
- be placed on standby to launch a possible rescue operation
if Movistar went down.
He sent a flurry of further e-mails, but an hour after
the drama began he announced in another message that
the water level was reducing and that the water-tight
bulkheads had not been breached.
The other boats, who were prepared to abandon racing
to launch a recsue mission, were told to stand down.
As the drama subsided, Bekking sent a message saying:
"A sailor's nightmare is sinking, and this looked
like a pretty serious situation.
"If we had rats onboard they would have jumped
off by now."
He told how he mobilized people on deck to drop all
the sails and was shocked when he went below deck to
find the generator box was already under water.
"And what a mess inside, sails, sleeping bags,
food bags, you can't name it, was floating around,"
he said.
"In the meantime Spike had collected all the safety
gear and put this on deck, just to be sure. Capey had
already informed race-headquarters. After seeing the
amount of water, I decided to ask headquarters if other
boats could assist.
"Water and electricity don't like each other so
much, so the circuit breakers would pop off all the
time. With the personal torches on it looked like a
scene that Hitchcock would only dream of.
"Now Chris was diving underwater to connect the
two emergency high capacity bilge pumps directly to
the batteries as that was the only way of assuring power
and running off the pumps."
They finally got the flooding under control with the
aid of the pumps and ensured the safety of the yacht
and its crew.
Bekking e-mailed: "Proud of the boys - they did
well, not only in this emergency situation, but as well,
how magnificently they have sailed Movistar up to that
moment."
Movistar was escorted from the sea and the air by both
the Argentine and Chilean navies into the port of Ushuaia
in southern Argentina, where the boat was repaired and
was rejoining the race.
It was the second time Movistar had got into difficulties.
Early in the event it had been forced to temporarily
stop racing and head to Cadiz in Spain for a repairs
to a damaged keel ram.
A similar fate befell Pirates of the Caribbean when
it had to abandon the first leg between Vigo, Spain,
and Cape Town, South Africa, because of damage to a
keel ram, but it was able to rejoin after undergoing
repairs.
And Ericsson and Brasil 1 rejoined the race after suffering
equipment damage on leg two. With ABN Amro One leading
the fourth leg, the yachts were on course to arrive
in Rio on March 7.
After a stopover in the Brazilian city - including
an in-port race on March 25 - they will set sail on
April 2 on the 5,000-mile fifth leg to Baltimore/Annapolis
in the US, where they are due to arrive on April 17.
|
28 November 2006
